25 February 2011

Tomato take-over

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Vegetables on a biodiversity blog?
I'm really sorry - just wanted to show how many tomatoes came out of my veggie garden last week. Enough to give to several neighbours and make a big pot of sauce, and still wonder what to do with the rest.


Riccardo gave me a few seedlings of this Italian tomato. Sliced open with S&P, some basil and a drizzle of olive oil... they are delicious!
When I threw a few ripes ones into a pot of Roma tomatoes, the difference became clear: the flesh of Riccardo's tomato is firm and a dark, almost wine-red colour, and the pips aren't so juicy. I'm sure they would make a superior sauce.

24 February 2011

April Fool in February?

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Surprise! the April Fool is coming into flower in the Biodiversity Garden.
Haemanthus coccineus is a member of the Amaryllis family. In winter it produces two big flat leaves and then goes completely dormant during summer, with nothing showing above the ground. In autumn a spectacular flower appears - like magic! After flowering, fleshy seeds are produced and the flower stalk eventually collapses, so the ripe seeds are released in early winter - just in time for the rains.


These bulbs were rescued by the City of Cape Town Biodiversity Management Branch from a development site on the Cape Flats. They spent some time at the old abatoir in Maitland (which is where the Biodiversity Dept is based), and the hundred-odd bulbs were then donated to the Biodiversity Garden.




Signs of creativity in the Khoikhoi fire hearth display: red and yellow ochre... looks like they had fun!

18 February 2011

Kids in the Garden

Wendy Hitchcock has been appointed by the City to develop educational activities for the Biodiversity Garden. It is wonderful to see how someone with her special skills and experience is making the Garden come alive for children and linking it to the curriculum.


The Department of Education has clamped down on school outings - apparently because some teachers opted for going on multiple excursions and didn't bother to teach. Nowaday kids aren't allowed to go on an outing unless it includes exercises to develop literacy and numeracy skills. Fair enough.

Wendy has developed worksheets and activities for different age groups, and is currently testing them on various trial groups. Here are some pics which she sent me:


"Pretend you are a litle seed, in the ground...waiting to germinate...

Then the rain comes, and you come alive, growing up to the light...!"


Grinding ochre - like the Khoikhoi used to:


Wendy writes: The cobra/rinkhals is definitely the most popular animal and the security guy has a really hard time keeping them from standing on the plants because they all want to crowd around the snake. I am getting better at crowd control.

I was shocked to see a child writing that spiders eat plants!!!! This garden is really important for these city kids to learn the basics.

Go for it Wendy - good work!

15 February 2011

A weekend away

This weekend we go to the land where these pics were taken.
Almost exactly a year ago.
Can't wait.





14 February 2011

In the garden

My garden is blessed with many chameleons - probably due to the absence of cats and pesticides. I am absolutely fascinated by these creatures - when I see one, I just have to take a pic.

I'm not the best chameleon spotter: I usually see them just as I'm about to prune or chop something down! - in this case agapanthus. Needless to say I put my secateurs away, and grabbed my camera instead.



The Cape Dwarf chameleon gives birth to live young and I do sometimes see a bunch of litte ones all on one bush. Technically they are ovoviviparous - i.e. they produce eggs but retain them inside the female body until hatching occurs. According to Vincent Wagner (The Life of the Chameleon, 1983):

Each baby is extruded separately, the process taking 5 to 20 seconds, in a fairly tight-fitting membranous bag, with its tail wrapped around itself...The parent prefers to be on a horizontal or sloping, fairly thick branch, so that the bag is deposited on it. With a few convulsive wriggles the young chameleon immediately breaks the bag and climbs out... At 2 to 5 min intervals the female produces the rest of the family, and then unconcernedly walks off, and forgets all about them. The baby has a body 12mm long and a tail 18mm long.

Now that is something to look out for!

The number of young produced varies, but is often around a dozen. There appears to be no fixed season for birth, and there may be more than one litter per year.

The Common Chameleon (found in the northern parts of SA) lays her eggs in soil - usually about 4 times as many as the Dwarf Chameleon. They are laid in March and take 10 months to mature.

Fascinating - these different reproductive strategies.

11 February 2011

A walk up Cecilia Ridge

A few weeks ago I felt like a long view and some solitude, so I parked at Cecilia Forest and headed up Cecilia Ridge. It's an easy way up the montain with lovely views over the City.



Crassula coccinea - Klipblom

Protea speciosa - since I saw it at Silvermine for the first time, I'm seeing it everywhere. Funny that. The white hairs on the leaf margins seem distinctive.



And then I made a short detour to the De Villiers dam, which is looking rather surreal in its half-empty state. Ghostly white sandstone rocks.

The water is a beautiful tea colour, on account of the phenols and tannins found in fynbos. These chemicals leach out of decomposing plant matter in seeps and streams, giving the water its characteristic brown colour. Having grown up in the Cape, I will always associate pristine mountain streams with brown water.



Then Mickey and I headed down the mountain, on the jeep track.




These miserable Knysna Yellowwood trees were planted decades ago - presumably by foresters. Podocarpus falcatus is not local to our area and is locally invasive in the lower forest, growing like hairs on a dog's back. They are displacing local forest species, including our local yellowwood, Podocarpus latifolius.

I find it extremely irritating and embarrassing that Table Mountain National Park does nothing about their removal, not to mention the thousands of other invasive aliens - and this is supposed to be a World Heritage Site!


I like pine forests because they are incredibly silent - the needles absorb any sound underfoot and they are almost devoid of wildlife, except for the odd bird of prey. All the forests on Table Mnt are being systematically felled - soon there will be none left.

I am a great biodiversity fan and support the removal of aliens (including pines) on high mountain slopes. But to remove every single tree and bit of shade on the urban edge, in areas which are highly transformed and have little conservation value anyway - in the name of CONSERVATION - is ridiculous.

There has been a huge public outcry in Cape Town about the wholesale removal of these forests in recreational areas - to absolutely no avail. The managers at Table Mnt NP reign supreme. Unfortunately this kind of hard-core fanaticism does not win support for Cape biodiversity - on the contrary, it alienates people.



So better enjoy the forests while they last!

05 February 2011

Orange Kloof Walk

I am very lucky to have a friend who has a research permit for Orange Kloof which means we can walk there without an guide. Saturday morning we set off, up Constantia Corner which offers lovely views over Hout Bay and Orange Kloof (on the right of the pic).




I've been up Constantia Corner many times, and we did the same walk a year ago, so the plant populations en route are familiar to me - it felt like I was checking up on old friends.



My favourite part is right on top of the mountain, with grassy-restiod fynbos and those sculptural sandstone rocks - and no sign of the City or human habitation. We had coffee and croissants at the rock shelter.


Then past Camel Rock and the Overseer's hut (now some kind of Hoerikwagga lodge, complete with surburban latte fence) and over the Hely Hutchinson dam wall...



Finally we dropped down into Disa Gorge into the resticted Orange Kloof. The wall is made of the local grey sandstone which has been beautifully hewn into massive rectangular blocks. I admit I have a penchant for bold feats of engineering like bridges, dams and stone aqueducts in wild landscapes. They have a scale and sculptural quality which appeals to my senses.



Not the same dam wall, but another one close by, showing the quality of the stone work (March, 2010).


The path drops into a forested kloof, and for a little while the vegetation is lush and the extra moisture is tangible. Here is Marie, on our walk a year ago.

This time Mike and I stopped for a few flowering disas, but my eye was irresistably drawn to the pretty new foliage of Blechnum.


Red Disa, Disa uniflora

Why do we always take pictures of the perfect flower? Here is the one next door: it think it's pollinia were eaten - noshed by a hungry beetle rather than removed by its delicate pollinator, the Mountain Pride butterfly.


Along the way Mike kept a count of Mountain Pride butterflies - he had eight sightings in all. Meneris tulbaghia is the sole pollinator of a guild of orange and red flowered fynbos species which flower between November and March. The butterfly is unusual in that it one of few insects that can see red in the visible spectrum - and is therefore the sole insect pollinator of these red-flowered plant species. I have seen it swoop down on a red backpack or hiker's socks, and even a red Opel Kadett!

Along our path and on the butterfly's menu, so to speak, were: Crassula coccinea, Red Disa (Disa uniflora) and Tritoniopsis triticea.

Crassula coccinea, Klipblom

Although we didn't see the Cluster Disa (Disa ferruginea), this species is also visited by the Mountain Pride Butterfly. It is interesting that the disa doesn't offer a nectar reward and mimics Tritoniopsis, a nectar-producing irid. When the butterfly visits the Cluster disa, and sticks its proboscis down the floral tube in search of nectar, there's nada! nothing there - but the disa deposits its sack of pollen (pollinia) on the butterfly. It's trickery and deceit in action.

Further along the way there is a nice stand of Leucadendron strobilinum - another endemic to Table Mountain. Fynbos is characterised by its high degree of endemism, so this is not unusual - in fact I can be a bit blase about it. But actually it is remarkable that this species is found only on this mountain and nowhere else in the world. Thank god it is fairly well-protected in the Table Mountain NP (if they finally get round to urgent alien clearing and erosion control in the Park).


Leucadendron strobilinum is easy to recognise by the fringe of silky white haris on the leaf margins.

Along the way we came across this chap - no idea what he's called. Methinks I need to acquire a reptile book...

Summer in the garden

Happy summer days in my garden, despite the heat and unusual humidity. The plants thriving under these conditions and blooming now are those which have their origin in the summer rainfall region of our country.

Agapanthus 'Selma Bock' - a pretty hybrid with white flowers, blushed with violet.


Among the stepping stones I come across a lovely surprise: I noticed Boophane distacha, the Bushman Poison Bulb, making its first bud. It's that small pink dot on the righthand side of the pic.

Boophane - known as Gifbol in Afrikaans - contains extremely toxic alkaloids which can be fatal when engested. Notwithstanding it is used medicinally: the dry outer scales are used as a dressing after circumcision and weak decoctions of the bulb scales are used as an enema to treat various complaints, or as a sedative. Higher doses lead to hallucinations and even higher doses can be fatal. Boophane disticha was used by the Khoisan to get into a trance state, and it is one of only two plant species depicted in rock paintings. The fan of pleated leaves is very distinctive - even on the painting.


Around the corner, under the oaks, the shade garden is looking lush and green.



This part of the garden was planned as a White Garden, and indeed there are white flowered species such as Pavetta, Rothmannia, Japanese Anemone and white azaleas - but there are as many blue and mauve exceptions. Guess I'm not very good at sticking to rules!



Crinum moorei
- at this time of the year the leaves are in tatters, but the tall blooms make up for it. The fresh green upright foliage is a real asset in the winter garden.




In the bathroom garden, it is the time of Scadoxus multiflorus ssp. katherinae. In the first year that I planted it, there were no flowers, and since then there as been one more flower each year. So in Scadoxus Time I have lived here for 5 years.